Why are shotguns often so reviled for big game hunting?

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Think back to your first BB gun, watching the bb's swerve left, right, up and down unpredictably with every shot. That is hunting with a smooth bore shotgun and slugs.
Of course many tales are told of hitting beer cans every time at 100 yards with slugs from old smooth bore pump guns. I learned long ago that setting a beer can on a post at 100 yards brought the story telling to and abrupt end.

I’d agree that a smooth bore of any kind isn’t the best option if 100 yard shots are likely where you’re hunting, though the various plumbata slugs combined with sights or a scope might do better at that range than a bead sighted bird gun chucking cheap foster slugs.

Shotguns are my favorite type of projectile weapon, but I’ll quickly concede that they’re not a great crop field gun.

In environments such as thick woods and cedar swamps where you’re lucky if you can even see 50 yards let alone shoot 100, however, I just don’t see the huge advantage a rifle has over a shotgun beyond recoil reduction.
 
I find grouse hunting more challenging than deer sometimes... those little buggers are hard to see, then they flush and give you a heart attack, and then you have to recover and track them in the timber for a shot. Deer, once you find one, just stand there and let aim at them... my experience so far with hunting with a shotgun.

I shot a fair number out of the air, but I did my best to spot them on the ground or perched on tree limbs.

Sometimes they would get a bit drunk on fermenting apples, so we even got a few that bounced into windshields or even the downstairs window of our house once. Easiest game meat ever.
 
Winchester makes a 12ga sabot that is a 385 gr partition type bullet traveling at 1800fps from the muzzle. That is pretty good ballistics.

My Ithaca 37 Deerslayer will group them 3” at 100.

I’m starting to think my support of shotgun hunting is through the lens of someone who has not cheaped out on my shotgun hunting equipment and who has prepared for the limitations of shotgun hunting. Good guns, good sighting systems/scopes, testing ammo, lots of range time in general, no flinch from recoil, and no questionable shots pertaining to the limitations of my skill or equipment.

When I hunt with a shotgun, I am not thinking to myself that the shotgun is inferior to the rifle but rather that I am using a perfectly adequate weapon for the hunting I will be doing.
 
It depends on where you’re hunting. Where I grew up, hunting deer was probably the least efficient way to put meat in the freezer, no matter how good you are at sitting in one spot in the cold from dawn til dusk. You could do ok with small game (ruffed grouse and snowshoe hare, primarily) though.
Certainly. Nobody wants to hunt grouse or hares with a .44 Mag rifle. You titled the thread though, and you said "big game". ;)
 
Nothing wrong with a shotgun where I primarily hunt over trails between the foraging and bedding areas. However I primarily use Great Grandfather's 92 Win in .38 WCF. It works just fine for 60 yd and under shots. I also use a flintlock in a similar situation on the Refuge. I do stalk hunt and kick deer out of bedding areas on occasion. Again not a bad area for buckshot.
 
That was me I am sure. I have nothing but good things to say about foster slugs inside of 75 yds and sabots (from rifle barrels) inside of 150. As I said before, it seems some find this range limitation unacceptable. I get it, there are better options but it would seem we are talking about how effective shotguns are and not how they compare to rifles when a word like reviled is used to describe them. Reviled implies there is a perception that they are incapable of killing properly.

Foster slug<75yds=dead deer. Usually a DRT. (my definition of DRT is usually Dropped Right There, not necessarily Dead Right There. For my purposes, as long as the animal does not move from where it was standing the round used was a 100% success. If they get up after that, well then, that's not a DRT) . Does not matter if it was a double lung, heart, high shoulder, whatever)
Sabot slug<150yds=dead deer. Often but not as often DRT. Heart shots will usually not drop them but double lungs seem to work pretty well.

If you did your due diligence and sighted in your shotgun with slugs (within the limitations of your sights and your own shooting limitations, right?)(and you tried different brands and types of slugs too, right? Remington, Winchester, Federal, or the one everyone forgets about and is probably the best of them all, Brenneke) then you should hit your target if it is a high percentage shot. (target standing still, etc.)

I'm not sure there is enough bandwidth on this board for me to give personal examples of how much success I have had with slugs and how little failure. There was a catch though. I didn't take long shots. If they were out of range, I wasn't shooting. At the same time I have been party to other folks failures many times. You cant expect to get good shots on moving targets, targets out of range, or in the case of my dad, if your eyes are too old to see the open rifle sights he was using on his slug gun. (a low power scope fixed that)

Some interesting things I have seen with shotguns shooting deer:

-12 ga Foster slug at 30yds broadside right into the ham of a mature doe. DRT. That is not a typo. D-R-T. It did not move or twitch. I cannot fully explain this but can only assume the deer had undertaken such shock from the impact that the spine (and possibly the brain) was disrupted. You know, .73 caliber, 437 gr projectile going around 1300 fps at that range. Either way the deer was dead when approached.
-20 ga Foster slug at 60 yds broadside into the goodies of a small buck and into the liver of the mature doe right behind it. Both DRT.
-20ga Barnes sabot slug at 40 yds frontal shot on a large doe into the chest and exited out the keister. DRT Those slugs and their inferior sectional density.
-Or, 12 ga Lightfield sabot broadside through the heart of a doe. Typical. Ran 40 yds and crumpled.
-Heres a good one. This is an example of a yahoo shotgun hunter. 12 ga pump with just a bead. Shoots a buck in the guts with a foster slug and it drops right there. Approaches the deer and sees its still alive. He raises his gun to finish it off and somehow the deer snaps his head back and he ends up shooting off an antler. (The slug carried on though still killed it.) This seems like it could only happen to someone who just bought his license the day before and never sighted his gun in properly.

So what I am getting at is for me, IME, slugs are devastating on animals. I am curious how they would fare against elk and moose. However, as has been touched on earlier, if a rifle is an option, it is probably a better option than a shotgun. If in some bizzaro world I absolutely knew a shot was going to be 20 yds away I would probably opt for the shotgun if the game was in NA. If not a shotgun, my next option would not be a bottleneck rifle round but probably a similarly slow and short range cartridge like a 45-70 or 444 Marlin.

As it is, I currently can use any centerfire and I opt for a 44 mag rifle. This is mostly because I also hunt in a straight wall state. This gun has About the same ballistics as a sabot slug. Why aren't pistol caliber rifles so REVILED? 357 rifles or (gasp) handguns must be really anemic. Why is nobody condemning them so hard and heartily?

I admire your hunting skills and marksmanship but doubt the performance of slugs of any kind on poorly placed shots. But what you say is possible and while different from the experience of myself and other slug hunters believable. But far from the norm.
 
It would be interesting to pit various shotgun slug loads against magnum revolver rounds fired from carbines and compare terminal performance out to 125 yards or so.
That's pretty far for either one. 75 yards would be a more ethical max. Except for folks that don't bother to actually measure ranges. I was a surveyor and found that humans are dreadfully bad at estimating distance.
 
I admire your hunting skills and marksmanship but doubt the performance of slugs of any kind on poorly placed shots. But what you say is possible and while different from the experience of myself and other slug hunters believable. But far from the norm.

Definitely not the norm and upon reading my post again, it may sound like I am implying that shot placement does not matter with shotguns and in no way do I think that.

I have hunted with a bunch of bozo hunters in shotgun zones. Good people and safe but not great hunters or shots compounded with the fact they are using a more challenging firearm that comes standard with an inferior sighting system. (Bead). There were PLENTY more examples of these same guys blasting away and hitting nothing but air or wounding game only to have it run off property. We never did drives. That would have made matters worse I am sure.

Those are some fun academic anecdotes and that is all they are. Just a few examples of how shotguns (with slugs) have more power than most give them credit for when used at appropriate ranges.
 
That's pretty far for either one. 75 yards would be a more ethical max. Except for folks that don't bother to actually measure ranges. I was a surveyor and found that humans are dreadfully bad at estimating distance.

I was thinking in the context of a ballistics gel test, just to see what they do.

it would be an expensive experiment.
 
I was thinking in the context of a ballistics gel test, just to see what they do.

it would be an expensive experiment.
I don't think anyone with any experience with them would question the lethality of shotgun slugs at the ranges you're talking about. I've killed plenty of deer with a shotgun and there's no question it'll put them down just fine. Lethality isn't the reason they're a poor choice compared to a decent straight wall cartridge rifle though (again, going with the thread title of "big game", not multi species general use)
 
I don't think anyone with any experience with them would question the lethality of shotgun slugs at the ranges you're talking about. I've killed plenty of deer with a shotgun and there's no question it'll put them down just fine. Lethality isn't the reason they're a poor choice compared to a decent straight wall cartridge rifle though (again, going with the thread title of "big game", not multi species general use)

For the sake of the thought experiment (which is admittedly what this thread is) I’ll limit the scenario to deer sized game at a maximum range of 50ish yards. Let’s also assume both the straight wall cartridge rifle and the shotgun are equipped with some kind of reasonably decent sighting system beyond a bird bead. Finally, we’ll assume the operators of both platforms are well practiced with their respective weapons.

Within the above parameters, what makes, for instance the .44 mag rifle superior to the shotgun with slugs?

I can concede recoil and cost per round. There’s nothing wrong with not liking recoil, of course, but some of us don’t mind the slow heavy push of shotgun recoil. I’ll take it compared to the snappy punch of a .30-06 class rifle.

Lethality? Not all slugs are equal. I have a hard time imagining a deer taking a good Brenneke or Ddupleks to the vitals and shrugging it off.

Accuracy? In the academic sense, the .44 mag wins, but if ranges are close, the gun doesn’t have to shoot dime sized groups. At 50 yards with a ghost ring sighted shotgun and Brenneke slugs, I have shot 5 round, one ragged hole groups (it’s the internet so I probably won’t be believed).

not that I think PCCs are inadequate. I’ve owned a few and they’re just plain neat guns. I have one I’m jonsing for as we speak.

I’m just saying that at close ranges, shotgun vs. straight wall metallic round seems like a six of one half a dozen of the other comparison.
 
For the sake of the thought experiment (which is admittedly what this thread is) I’ll limit the scenario to deer sized game at a maximum range of 50ish yards. Let’s also assume both the straight wall cartridge rifle and the shotgun are equipped with some kind of reasonably decent sighting system beyond a bird bead. Finally, we’ll assume the operators of both platforms are well practiced with their respective weapons.

Within the above parameters, what makes, for instance the .44 mag rifle superior to the shotgun with slugs?

I can concede recoil and cost per round.
Within those very narrow parameters, you're correct, recoil and cost are the most significant differences. I use a .44 Magnum single shot, so for me, two more differences would be the bulkiness of the ammo itself (although that's admittedly minor) and the noise level. I've never actually measured it but my .44 mag rifle is quieter than a .22 LR pistol to my ear. Once we start pushing the range past that 50 yards and add in the additional cost of adding a reliable mount and optic to a shotgun (which means, at least around here, that most people don't use an optic on a shotgun) and the differences rapidly become much more significant.
 
Within those very narrow parameters, you're correct, recoil and cost are the most significant differences. I use a .44 Magnum single shot, so for me, two more differences would be the bulkiness of the ammo itself (although that's admittedly minor) and the noise level. I've never actually measured it but my .44 mag rifle is quieter than a .22 LR pistol to my ear. Once we start pushing the range past that 50 yards and add in the additional cost of adding a reliable mount and optic to a shotgun (which means, at least around here, that most people don't use an optic on a shotgun) and the differences rapidly become much more significant.

Those narrow parameters defined my deer hunting experience back in Vermont and Maine. Along with very low deer population density, stringent definitions of legal deer, and numerous restrictions on method of take that make a hard thing harder.

I’ve long been a bit envious of hunters from states where deer breed like rats and you can take does for meat and be picky about the bucks you shoot. Here’s my impression of a Texas deer hunter: “So yeah, I passed on the 8 pointer and decided to shoot the 12 pointer that was standing next to the 10 pointer.” ;)

Now, if I ever won a free Rocky Mountain elk hunt or Alaskan moose hunt (the only way I’ll ever be able to afford either of those things) the shotgun is either staying home or coming along in a backup role.
 
Winchester makes a 12ga sabot that is a 385 gr partition type bullet traveling at 1800fps from the muzzle. That is pretty good ballistics.

My Ithaca 37 Deerslayer will group them 3” at 100.

I’m starting to think my support of shotgun hunting is through the lens of someone who has not cheaped out on my shotgun hunting equipment and who has prepared for the limitations of shotgun hunting. Good guns, good sighting systems/scopes, testing ammo, lots of range time in general, no flinch from recoil, and no questionable shots pertaining to the limitations of my skill or equipment.

When I hunt with a shotgun, I am not thinking to myself that the shotgun is inferior to the rifle but rather that I am using a perfectly adequate weapon for the hunting I will be doing.
Assuming you are using a rifled barrel with a scope to fire those the sabot slugs, certainly capable of good accuracy within reasonable ranges. Of course it's not exactly a shotgun anymore as much as a specialized rifle with plastic hulled ammo. :rofl:
 
Assuming you are using a rifled barrel with a scope to fire those the sabot slugs, certainly capable of good accuracy within reasonable ranges. Of course it's not exactly a shotgun anymore as much as a specialized rifle with plastic hulled ammo. :rofl:

Wait, are there really guys out there who would run sabots down a bead sighted smooth bore?:eek:
 
I think people do fire sabots with a rifled choke and those clip on sights that go onto rib/or red dot/scope.
 
Assuming you are using a rifled barrel with a scope to fire those the sabot slugs, certainly capable of good accuracy within reasonable ranges. Of course it's not exactly a shotgun anymore as much as a specialized rifle with plastic hulled ammo. :rofl:

I do call it a 12 ga rifle often.
 
Those narrow parameters defined my deer hunting experience back in Vermont and Maine. Along with very low deer population density, stringent definitions of legal deer, and numerous restrictions on method of take that make a hard thing harder.

I’ve long been a bit envious of hunters from states where deer breed like rats and you can take does for meat and be picky about the bucks you shoot.
I think you kind of answered your own question here in a way. While there are certain limited circumstances within certain regions where a shotgun works as well as a rifle, there is nowhere that it works better and a huge majority of the country where it works a lot worse. It's really quite unusual to find an area where there is absolutely zero chance of a shot beyond 50 yards. That being the case and especially in areas where deer population densities are low, many people don't want to intentionally limit themselves by using a less accurate weapon that's more expensive to train with.
 
Wait, are there really guys out there who would run sabots down a bead sighted smooth bore?:eek:

They are out there, and they are among us.

Yup! Lots of them.

I saw plenty of people putting litefields and other high dollar sabots through bird guns. Under 50 yards I don't think it mattered.

I think people do fire sabots with a rifled choke and those clip on sights that go onto rib/or red dot/scope.

I tried the Hastings rifled choke tube years ago. It wasn't that much better than the smooth rifle sight barrel on my 12 gauge wingmaster. Got maybe a 3 inch group at 50 yards with expensive sabots versus a 5 inch group with cheap(er) Winchester fosters. My wife's 20 gauge Mossberg will throw the Remington sluggers into a 3 inch group at 50 yards with a IC choke.
 
Assuming you are using a rifled barrel with a scope to fire those the sabot slugs, certainly capable of good accuracy within reasonable ranges. Of course it's not exactly a shotgun anymore as much as a specialized rifle with plastic hulled ammo. :rofl:
But you can spend a fortune on trying different combinations of barrels, scopes and ammo to even get minute of pie plate at 100 yards. What Earthgoat has done is exceptional. I have gone through that process and now have a 11-87 with a rifled barrel, red dot and use premium Winchester sabot slugs and am lucky 3-4 inches at 50 yards. And I can outshoot everyone I have hunted with. Holdover goes to feet instead of inches pretty fast, depending on ammo. Same is true of pistol cartridges.
 
But you can spend a fortune on trying different combinations of barrels, scopes and ammo to even get minute of pie plate at 100 yards. What Earthgoat has done is exceptional. I have gone through that process and now have a 11-87 with a rifled barrel, red dot and use premium Winchester sabot slugs and am lucky 3-4 inches at 50 yards. And I can outshoot everyone I have hunted with. Holdover goes to feet instead of inches pretty fast, depending on ammo. Same is true of pistol cartridges.

3 to 5 inches at 50 yards shouldn't be that hard to accomplish (and yes that means literal pie plates at 100). It can be challenging to shoot tight groups with a red dot just due to the nature of the sight and size of aiming point. Is your red dot on a cantilever mount attached to the barrel or is it a receiver mount? You really need the sight attached to the barrel with a shotgun. Unlike a rifle, there is always some amount of barrel movement in relation to the receiver with recoil.

That said, making a comparison to PCC's is not exactly the same thing. A few states have legalized them in the midwest. Far and away the majority of the rest of the country slugs don't make the grade for big game when given the choice to use a 270, 308, or any other standard hunting rifle. I haven't bothered taking my slug guns out hunting since moving to Alabama even though ranges tend to be short in the forested mountains around here.
 
My 11-87 with a rifled cantilever barrel scoped will shoot the 1oz Remington Copper Solids 2 3/4" sabots 4 inch groups at 100 yards. I'm not even sure they still make them, I bought about 15 boxes of them 25 years ago when I found out how well they shot through my gun and about 22 years ago was the last time I used a shotgun to hunt deer with. My 11-87 gets used regularly with the 30" barrel on skeet and sporting clays but haven't had the slug barrel on in a long time.
 
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